bubble nebula

[skywalker3]

Hi everyone,

beginning stargazer hear. i am 11 and got a telescope for christmas (skywatcher dobsonian with focal length 1200mm and aperture 150mm) and also a book called the stargazers handbook. while searching through the book i found a nebula in casssiopea called the bubble nebula. i thought it would be a good thing to observe so have the target of going out tonight to find it. but i have a few questions. 1) do you think my telescope will be able to see it well. 2)do i need a wide field of view for observing it. please give me advice, thanks in advance- amateur stargazer.

[umadog]

Welcome!

As I remember, the Bubble in Cas is a tough object. Looking at my logs, I've seen it twice from skies that I'd say are roughly mag 5.5 or so (maybe better).

The first time I saw it with a 12" f/5 and wrote down: "Visible in the TeleVue Panoptic 27mm, 55x. Improved with OIII filter. WIth the TeleVue Panoptic 19mm, 78x it needed the UHC filter to be visible"

The second time was with an 18" f/4 and all I have in the logs is that "the brighter side of the bubble is very clearly visible at 150x"

So you don't need a wide field. However, right now it's fairly low in the sky until after about 2am. So later in the year (autumn) is a better time for it. I've not tried it in anything smaller than a 12", but I suspect you're going to have a tough time with a 6". SkyTools, which estimates whether something will be visible in a given scope, doesn't seem to think it will be visible in scopes below 12". But then again the algorithm it uses to guess these things is rather approximate. If you can see it at all it will need dark skies.

If you're looking for other targets you might right now want to shoot for M13, M3, or the galaxies in Leo and Virgo.

[swamp thing]

As above. This is a tough target for a beginner. That's not to say its not do-able but dark skies are going to be needed.

If your sky isn't ink black you may be better off trying a few brighter objects first. Like some globs or open clusters.

Good hunting

[Ulysses]

Hi, that's a tough one, especially as the sky isn't really getting dark until very late at the moment. I'd recommend starting with a few globular clusters. M13, M92, M3 are all visible at present for example, and should be great targets in your scope. If you're planning an observing session, see what constellations are highest in the sky and explore them for deep sky objects. You may also wish to hunt down some galaxies in Ursa Major or Canes Venatici? Have a good session! Paul